Yet against all odds, they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds. Growing up in a housing estate in Glasgow, Mungo and James are born under different stars-Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic-and they should be sworn enemies if they’re to be seen as men at all. Stuart has just released his highly anticipated second novel, YOUNG MUNGO, which centers on a relationship between two young men in a working class neighborhood in Glasgow…Mungo is a Protestant and James is a Catholic but the two become close friends…naturally, obstacles emerge to thwart them. That beloved novel is fiction but written from the author’s own experiences growing up very poor with a single parent mother failing to cope with her alcoholism. Poor, working class, gay Scottish boys aren’t encouraged to write novels or even study writing and literature but Douglas Stuart defied those low expectations set for him by the rigid British class structure and ended up winning the prestigious Booker Prize for his acclaimed first novel, Shuggie Bain in 2020.
